Bae SC, et al. - Researchers investigated if a causal link between alcohol intake and risk of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) exists in a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis using the inverse-variance weighted, weighted median, and MR-Egger regression methods. They used the UK Biobank genome-wide association studies (GWASs; n = 336,965) summary statistics of alcohol intake frequency as the exposure. As the outcome, they used an SLE GWAS consisting of 1,311 SLE and 1,783 control subjects of European descent. To improve inference, they selected 20 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with alcohol intake frequency at genome-wide significance as instrumental variables. Findings of the MR analysis offered no support for a causal inverse link between alcohol intake and SLE occurrence.